impassionate
by songs
Summary: he says her name like it's coming from his soul; — taichi ო chihaya.


**title**: impassionate**  
**

**pairing: **taichi ო chihaya.

**setting: **set at the end of the second anime. slightly AU.

**summary: **He says her name like it's coming from his soul.

**disclaimer: **own nothing

* * *

**i. **Taichi is pulling her by the wrist—her good wrist—and she catches the ends of his breathy sentences: _Arata's match. Need to hurry. Second floor. _

It takes her a moment to register everything—his skin on hers, her tear-stains drying on the neck of his shirt, the breadth of his back as she lingers behind him. There is a split-second where everything is _blank_, because Taichi made Class A, _he made Class A_, after everything, after all he's been through, after his months and months of internal battles she knows he's been fighting (she's found similar card-wars in her mind) and all of his work and his yearning and then it hits: _the Queen's match against Arata._

The Class A finals.

She can't believe she's let something so important slip—if even for a moment. But, she can. Because it's Taichi. Taichi who is dragging her to the second floor, Taichi who hasn't said a word beyond _thanks _about his win.

She pulls from his grip like water, and his head is dipped; his hair is covering his eyes. She's seen this angle of his face before, but it is only now that she realizes how sad it is.

"Chihaya?" he asks. Her name is gentle in his throat.

She is scared of a lot of things: the match beyond the doors, her fight for Queenhood, her future. Arata. Shinobu.

Chihaya has heard her name a hundred times; in conversation, in karuta battles—_Chihaya furu, Impassionate gods—_she's heard every shape of it, every song of it. In her mother's soprano, her sister's snarl. In reader's chimes. In Kana's fairy-voice and Nishida's grumble.

In Arata's voice. Her name sounds like poetry when he says it, like something magic.

But.

The way Taichi says it—in this bare, bare moment, frightens her even more.

x

**ii. **He visits her in the hospital often, but he is only alone once. It takes Chihaya a moment to realize that they aren't alone very often, just the two of them, besides their train-rides home, or their sparse seconds before practice.

She wonders over it. Taichi has always been around—only, he hasn't. It's been a little over a year since they've reunited and it feels like he's already dug his way deep within her skin—like he's part of her bones, like it's always been that way. He is the anchor where Arata is the sea, or so she thought.

She flexes her fingers, her fist—still weak. Only a bit better than broken. Not strong enough to carry an anchor.

Chihaya wonders if she can shape this into one of her summer-poems.

"Chihaya," Taichi says, and there it is again. Her name in his voice.

Has he always said it that way? _Chee-haya. _Not like song-speak, but something more rooting, more intimate.

_Impassionate._

She decides she's been listening to too many karuta-tapes. Her mind is warped.

"Hm?" she asks, shutting her sister's laptop.

"Do you," he starts, and stops. And swallows. There's a slip of red in his skin and Chihaya wonders if it's the slant of the window-sunlight. "want to go for a walk? Outside? You've been cooped up in here for too long."

He offers her a small, Taichi-smile; not wide, not gleaming, not anything but _him_, the Taichi that he's been all this time, and like a snap of candlelight, her doubts fall away, and she nods: "I'd love to!"

X

**iii. **They are alone again on the walk to the Fujisaki Camp. There is a second where he looks like he's seven-cards down in a karuta match, like he's lost within himself, and then his gaze goes clear again.

Her hand still feels weak; as his palm swings by hers like a pendulum, she feels the bones of her fingers—unused, untrained for weeks—twitch towards him, and back to her side again.

Chihaya swallows the thought like water and jerks her arms around herself. She hears Taichi say: "We'll always move forward," but there's something more to his voice, something that might have been there all along.

There is a certain angle of her heart she's left to yearning, for things like karuta, defeating Shinobu-chan, and reaching Arata. But this last edge of summer, shrouded in hospital-light and sleepless nights, has left her victim to her other memories, her other thoughts.

Taichi.

Taichi catching her. Taichi letting her lean against him. Taichi leading her, Taichi following. Taichi dabbing tear-water from her eyes with his shirt, Taichi saying her name like it's coming from his soul.

Just, Taichi.

It's strange, really, because he's never seemed faraway to her. Unreachable. He's been by her side, for all this time.

_Close enough to—_

Her fingers twitch, and Chihaya stops them. Chihaya watches him as they continue walk, strangely somber, deep in thought.

_Which one of us, _she thinks, _built these walls? _

She drops her hands. His gaze shifts to her from his periphery. Her palms sway, open, close enough to touch his.

But only if he meets her halfway.

Chihaya swallows, afraid, for once, because this time, she is gambling what she cannot lose.

Taichi, for a year-long moment, says nothing, does nothing, and she is fearful—unsure of what move to make, because there are no cars to place, and her _hand_—

Is linked into his. The lines of his palm fold into hers—careful around the wrapping of her injury. It's strange, holding Taichi's hand—the same skin, but a different feeling, a different touch.

She likes it.

x

**iv. **"…Chihaya," he says, again, and that is when she knows it will all work out._  
_


End file.
